Ever since I wrote the posting The Swiss Male – Who is he?  I am often contacted by women asking for advice about Swiss men… I seem to have become the go-to agony aunt for lovelorn women around the world who have fallen for Swiss men and are very confused.  WELL THERE’S A SURPRISE. 

I know that it is all too easy to fall into the stereotypical trap here and confuse character and culture but hey you are getting this from the horse’s mouth. I am reporting from the coal face of 25 years of life with a Swiss man which should give me some credibility and a smidgen of insight into what makes a Swiss man tick.

Of course I can only talk about the Eastern Swiss Man, those hailing from the German speaking parts with, usually, a Protestant background.  But here is my take on Swiss Men and please feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below:

- Swiss men are parsimonious with their praise.  They do not compliment or praise unless by accident.  They won’t notice when you have been to the hairdresser’s or whether you are wearing a stunning LBD.   The flip side to this is that they don’t criticise or complain either.  I could go out to dinner in a bin liner for all Mr. Jules cared.  Only once has he said anything faintly critical as to my attire and it was a neutral but clever,

 ”Er, you’re not going to like the way that looks from behind” 

And because he says this and not “Jeeeesssssuuusssss!  Are you kidding me?” I am rather fond of him.

- Swiss men are not cuddly.  Don’t expect a cuddle, ever.  You might get a pat on the shoulder or a derrière squeeze at the moment when you least want it but that’s it.  There’s no smooching in front of the telly or public shows of affection.  He’ll willingly take your suitcase from you when you arrive off the plane but that is the nearest he’ll get to intimacy in a public space.  (Note:  If they start calling you odd names like chatzli, minou, etc. which the Swiss Germans deem as a sign of affection, put a stop to it at once it is a huge turn off.)

- Swiss men only have the left side of their brains working.  Hence they are brilliant bankers, brokers, negotiators.  Anything that involves logic is right up their strasse and if they have developed a brilliantly creative design concept alongside a brilliant piece of engineering or software for example, you’ll usually find there’s an Italian involved.

- Swiss men do not like emotion.  They are happy to analyse using logic until the cows literally come home but as their right side brain has no neural pathways having shrivelled up through non-use, feelings and emotions are something they cannot fathom.  So to Sofia in Argentina the reason he hasn’t written a letter of explanation is that he has no idea he has hurt your feelings. A Swiss man is very unlikely to give you closure although logically he knows he ought to – good manners and all that – he is incapable of writing “stuff” in an expressive heartfelt way.  Eyore’s dumbfounded, woebegone face in Winnie the Pooh springs to mind here. 

-Swiss men are perfectionists.  They can be a bit pernickety about their homes, cars, the food on their plates.  This is a country of high standards and they are used to upholding them.  To be fair they all work extremely hard and return those high standards in their work.

NOW THE GOOD STUFF

-  Swiss men are funny.  You will laugh at them (a lot) but also find that like the Brits they have a very dry, sense of humour and can also be extremely silly and childish.  They love British and American Sitcoms such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fawlty Towers etc. Mostly because they are so law-abiding that they wouldn’t ever dare do anything as naughty and anti-establishment so watching other people doing it, even if only pretending,  is absolutely thrilling.

-Swiss men need to marry foreign women.  They need to be shaken up out of their robotic thinking patterns, forced to let their hair down, spend time away from a landscape of mountains and lakes and eat something other than cheese and sausage.  (When Mr. Jules and I lived in America he would get lost every night on the way home from work.  Without a mountain or lake as guidance he was completely flummoxed by the grid-system).  I think all we foreign wives should receive a special allowance from the government.

-Swiss men will never let you down.  Your bills will be paid, your car will be serviced, your health insurance will be up-to-date and he’ll even put his loose change into your car so that you never run out for the parking meters.   They are never late, always do what they say they will and are extremely fair-play. (Apart from when partaking in family board games). 

-Swiss men are the best travel companions.  They never get stressed or nervous or angry when flights are delayed or hotel bookings lost or any kind of disaster strikes.  In fact they are good to have around in any kind of  emergency as they are so level headed – no emotions just the facts – which many put down to the compulsive military training they all undergo and of course the lack of a right sided brain helps here.

Marry one if you want to.  Preferably a Catholic from the sunnier, southern parts (the food’s better and they tend not to wear white sports socks with leather shoes), but wherever they hail from they are intensely loyal and easy to train if you go about it in a logical way and keep all the touchy feely stuff under wraps.

Sorry for the lull it’s half-term (again) and we took the girlies to Venice on the train, as it was cheaper, and I was lured by the thought of reading non-stop for six and a half hours.  At least I would have if I hadn’t taught Lexi to play scrabble last week and she triumphantly produced the board – having got through the rucksack control with her booty under the cover of darkness -  two minutes out of Lausanne before the man with the trolley had even passed.   

I’m rubbish at board games being a non-competitive type but I’m quite good at scrabble.  In fact I am so good I once made a man leave a room in fury when I produced the word “sequin” in New York back in 1986. (Claims to fame, you’ve got to grab ‘em and milk ‘em).

I like an ambitious man but not one who shouts “STOP THE GAME!!!” in Monopoly whenever someone lands on (his) Park Lane especially when playing with young children,  or one who refuses every Christmas to have his mother-in-law on his team for Trivial Pursuits.  But then this is a man who has never failed anything.  Not one exam, driving test, nada.  He passes everything first time.  When we were studying together for our motor boat license  I, as a slow-to-learn plodder, religiously studied 30 minutes a day two weeks prior, using the book, the interactive CD Rom and even had a plastic motor boat in the bath.  Mr. Jules looked at the book for about an hour in total, poured scorn on my exam techniques and you guessed it, not only passed but was the first out of the room.

A French woman once said to me.  “Mon plus grand travail c’est de lire.”  (My greatest life work is reading).   And I feel the same way.  When not organising my family’s life my next largest chunk of time is spent reading.  My reading bag for the train held a copy of Condé Nast Traveller, the FT, The Sunday Times, Hello Magazine, The Migros Magazine, a day old copy of La Côte, a book on meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn and The Bride’s Farewell by Meg Rosoff (brilliant). 

So words and the forming of them, plucking them out of the air, are part of me.  Scrabble plugs into my knowledge base.  And finally I beat him.

The village news flyer “L’Echo des Copons” which comprises dry and deadly boring reports of  riveting administrative details dressed up in posh French official-speak, had TWO human interest stories this week which caught my eye. 

The first reported that due to the unusually dry spell we are, much to the shame of this fiercely independent village, having to pump water up from the… lake.  This lake water has a different Ph balance to that of the river detaching the limescale and rust from old pipes which is “provoquant une coloration brunâtre”.  That’s rusty to you and me.  Those in this predicament are advised to purge the conduites.  That’s let it run to those of us in the real world, the subtext being get new pipes fitted. 

The second reported on the number (many) of villagers falling for internet scams and giving away their passwords: Vache, Edelweiss, Mont Blanc, Hirondelle,  Marguerite, willy nilly.  Imagine their surprise when they find they have a (fake) rental contract on  an apartment and/or have  purchased a (bogus) luxury car.  According to the posh Echo writer these scams originate in far away lands such as Africa and, er hum, Angleterre. 

Using the passwords the scammers then hack into the victims’ address books and pretend to be Farmer X, stuck in a foreign country desperate for money.  As many of the older villagers, whom I imagine are the victims of this escroquerie, have rarely, if ever, ventured as far as Geneva, this last one would be highly unlikely to convince anyone.  Picture the scene an elderly couple seated around dining room table,

“I received an email from my brother Henri today.”

“Ah bon?”

“Il est en Afrique!”

“Afrique!  Ce n’est pas Henri.   Passe moi le beurre.”  (Pass the butter)

I do like to think though that having already paid for their (bogus) apartments they would be enraged enough to actually get on a plane to say Namibia or maybe even further afield to far flung Angleterre  (the writer must have once taken Easyjet to Gatwick)- as long as it doesn’t clash with the male voice choir outings, bien sûr – to claim what is rightly theirs. 

It would make a great screen play:  Retired Swiss farmers wearing obligatory day wear of blue overalls accompanied by wives in aprons carrying Queen Mother handbags full of Gruyère and Kirsch board flight in Geneva and arrive much later in far away place brandishing wooden sticks usually used for cow herding, to resolve the issue the old-fashioned way.

Tuesday morning and as this is Switzerland I know that the washing machine repair man will be arriving.  Not “sometime during the day” as I hear happens in the UK messing people about and making people hang around all day, but as agreed between 8 and 9.30.  Here one is à l’heure and at 8.45 the door bell rings.

“Bonjour, merci d’être venu! ” I gush barely restraining from bear hugging him.  

He follows me down to the laundry room.  I walk backwards spreading rose petals at his feet.  If you are a mother reading this you will know how chaotic the world becomes without a working washing machine.  I offer him coffee, cigars, massage.  

“Non merci, c’est déjà fait.”  (No thanks I’ve already had my coffee).

Of course he has.  He  drank his coffee and read his paper between 5.30 and 6.15am before setting off to work at 6.16am.  

Five minutes later, machine in working order after a replaced valve, he pads back up the stairs where I am the poised hand maiden should he require anything.

He glances at the floor.  “Where did you get those tiles?”

I tell him over-elaborately going into details.  I’m way overdoing it.

He wants to know because he is repairing an old farmhouse up in the mountains.

“C’est mon dada*,” he says with a glint in his eye going out the door.  “Bonne journée Madame.”

 
*dada translates as hobby-horse but as usual the translation fails.  It is more than just a hobby-horse it has more of a visceral meaning  conveyed by the speaker and when you hear it said, in that way, you hear the feeling behind the word and know exactly what is meant.

We are to meet at The Waggoners  for dinner which is now run, to my delight, by a French Chef and his French team.

At one minute past the meeting time of seven o’clock Madre who is also with us, auntie Joan (AJ) being her sister, starts breathing heavily and says,

 ”They’re never late, something must have happened. I’m very worried.”  We have to prevent her calling the police at 5 minutes past and then at 7 minutes past with Madre grinding her teeth in anxiety, they arrive in a fluster of apologies.  How this older generation would deal with the varied and unpredictable arrival times of some of my dinner guests is hard to imagine.

“I’m so sorry,” gasps Aunty Joan loud enough for the whole pub to pause mid-sip and stare. “We had to stay back because Tommy Steele was on the One Show and HE,”  points at Uncle Dennis  ” HE,”  pauses for effect whilst we all consider the accused, “old wrinkly here, wanted to see what he looked like.”  

Vanity at 80?  God help me, I thought laughing at the two of them who after donkey’s years of marriage are still madly in love and bantering.

The menus arrive, reading glasses are found and passed around the table, explications given as to the frenchified food names amidst bemused mutterings of “there’s posh”.  An explication of en croûte from me leads AJ to remark “wrapped in pastry” in a tone which makes me doubt my whole life and consider whether perhaps the French are completely wrong about food. 

Uncle Dennis orders, double checks with AJ that he will like what he is eating as he is unable to remember what he doesn’t like any more and then launches into the story of how his golf game was ruined that week.

“I’m lying in bed, quarter to seven thinking I’ve got a nice game of golf to look forward to today when SHE shouts from the kitchen There’s a heron in the fish pond! and I jumps out of bed so fast I pull a muscle, had to sit in the golf buggy I did.”

Ninety minutes later, tightly hugged, we were waving them off into the night.

This week I received a Thank You card in the post.